Endgame for the Spanish ETA

By now it is clear that the Spanish government is willing to pay the seller’s price for a declaration (suitable for framing, complete with certificate of authenticity) by the Basque terror group ETA, stating that it is going out of business, disarming, and calling it quits on a murder spree that has claimed 857 lives over the past half century.

ETA wants an amnesty for the killers and a parliamentary presence for their enablers that will allow true believers in the radical Basque nationalist cause to compete openly for power and political authority with negligible risk to their personal safety and of not getting what they want. The terms and details have all been worked out in clandestine negotiations that have been held regularly since even before ETA declared a “permanent, general and verifiable” ceasefire last January.

Now, with general elections approaching and polls showing the ruling Socialist party trailing by over 15 percentage points, it is in both sides’ interest to close the deal. Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is exiting politics, but wants to be remembered as Mr. Peace, and not for having piloted the Spanish economy into its death-spin. For its part, ETA would prefer an outcome that does not give the conservative Popular Party an absolute majority that allows them to snub the demands of Spain’s non-violent Basque and Catalan nationalists.

But those are actually secondary considerations. An ETA shutdown sequence would likely have minimal impact on the November 20 polls. A survey at the beginning of October indicates only 3.7 percent of Spaniards consider terrorism to be their country’s most urgent problem. A year ago it was in third place; now it has plunged to tenth. As a result, it will be that much harder for the Socialists to sell an amnesty to those Spaniards who bitterly cling to their simple-minded notions that the thing to do with terrorists is bring them to justice.

In fact, there might never be a better time for doing just that. The group is a sorry shadow of its formerly lethal self. The hit teams are on the run; the recruiting, training, bomb making, support, and extortion networks disrupted or dismantled by coordinated police action in France and Spain. ETA’s last murder was of a French gendarme who died in a shootout during a botched car hijack in France in March 2010.

Police believe the group has been whittled down to 50 or so militants and scarcely a handful have the training or experience to carry out selective assassinations or indiscriminate bomb attacks. Most of them are lying very, very low somewhere in France. The two women and a man now running the show are said to be moving every week from one safe house to another, never venturing out of doors or traveling in the same car. Operationally speaking, unless they abruptly decide to go the suicide vest route, ETA is history.

There is, however, a militant stratum of diehards inside ETA and on its fringes who argue that to throw in the towel now amounts to throwing away the political dividends that shooting people in the back of the neck has earned them. Recent events, however, suggest that both sides have committed to a series of endgame moves, in a bid to deflect charges of a sellout from the dissidents in their respective ranks — hardline terrorists on the one side, and terrorism hardliners on the other.

This month, the Zapatero government has played its “say you’re sorry and all is forgiven” card, with its client media outlets revealing and playing up an encounter that took place in May between the son of the victim of a 1980 terror attack and a now regretful ETA hitman — who is not the killer of the man’s father. The son claimed he was not disappointed with the experience. “I saw a man who was aware of what he had done, and was asking for forgiveness. When you’re faced with something like that, you just can’t feel the hate anymore.”

13 Comments, 4 Threads

1.
eon

I can understand how ETA thinks this is feasible. They’ve already seen it work with the IRA in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the Red Army Faction in Germany. To say nothing of the European Union’s eagerness to do deals with Hamas, Fatah, etc.

My professional opinion is that it’s risky, for two reasons;

1. A terrorist group can lay the gun down, only to pick it up again when it suits them; and

2. There is no way to guarantee that while the “former” terrorist group is publicly singing hosannas about how “non-violent” and “democratic” they now are, they won’t have a few cells still working to carry out “direct actions” against priority targets, up to and including the potential for a putsch. After all, it worked for Hitler & Co., and very well indeed.

(And if anyone has a problem with me comparing terrorists to the Nazis, I state that they need to study their history more carefully. You can be sure the terrorists have done so.)

A smarter course would be for the Spanish authorities to hammer what’s left of ETA now, and throw the survivors in jail with their 700+ buddies. But that wouldn’t be the “egalitarian socialist” thing to do, so forget Zapatero even thinking about it.

In the end, ETA will probably end up along with Bildu dominating the entire Basque independence movement. Which will be nothing but bad news for the Basque people, and region. Not to mention Spain and France.

But since the governments in question simply cannot, or will not, learn from history, I am forced to conclude that their people will be forced to study this particular lesson all over again.

I can understand how ETA thinks this is feasible. They’ve already seen it work with the IRA in the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the Red Army Faction in Germany. To say nothing of the European Union’s eagerness to do deals with Hamas, Fatah, etc.

Well yeah, considering the fact that the original IRA (which went on to form the backbone of the actual army at independence) actually won the Republic of Ireland’s independence through terrorism, it does have some historical evidence to suggest it can work.

If the ETA gets what it wants after all the people it has killed, then it just proves that if you kill enough people and cause enough terror, you’ll eventually get what you want. Hey, I’ve got an idea, why don’t we just give Hezbollah and Hamas what they want, right? Of course that would mean the end of Israel, but that’s a small price to pay for “peace,” right? The problem with appeasing terrorists is that they never, ever, stop asking for new demands. And once you give in to them, where do you draw the line? This is a stupid play on the part of the Socialists in Spain and it will only lead to more, not less, bloodshed in the future.

ETA is a separatist movement; Hezbollah is not. As far as I know, ETA’s only grievance with Spain is the fact that it won’t let the Basque territory merge with the French Basque territories and become a Basque nation state.

Since ETA has been known to target civilians, I won’t defend their methods, but the Spanish government ought to be willing to let the Basque go if they want out. They’re not ethnic Spanish, but rather a conquered people (much like the Chechens are not Russians, but a conquered people who just wanted to leave the Russian Federation)

“…but the Spanish government ought to be willing to let the Basque go if they want out.”

You can’t be serious, right? So I guess it was OK for Texas, South Carolina, and a few other American states to just decide they didn’t want to be part of the union anymore and leave. I think the Spaniards would differ with you in just agreeing to let a chunk of their country declare independence just because they felt like it. Countries have a strange way of not wanting to let parts of their nation secede, as we did during our Civil War. And I’m also sure France would want to have a say in this too, since it involves their borders and some of their people as well.

And you’re right about Hezbollah not being a separatist movement. They just want all of Israel, not just a piece of it. ETA are a bunch of unemployed thugs who have murdered a lot of people for nothing. I wouldn’t negotiate anything with them, except their unconditional surrender.

And our dear old “Libertyship46″ cannot at all perceive how that, his “So I guess it was OK for Texas, South Carolina, and a few other American states to just decide they didn’t want to be part of the union anymore and leave.”, attempts a false conjunction, leaping quite over the reasons for, and the causes attendant upon our union, a new creation as a new nation, and so different from the origins of this modern Spain having grown out of the ancient Iberian people, . . . most curious, . . .

Nor, in his reasoning would the decades past of Spanish cruelty to the Basques, have already displaced any simplistic thrust such as: “I think the Spaniards would differ with you in just agreeing to let a chunk of their country declare independence just because they felt like it.”, . . . “the Spaniards would differ with you”, . . . comical, . . . oh well, . . .

Then I guess you would encourage Mexico to take back the entire US southwest and Texas too. I mean, us “cruel” Americans just took it away from them and kept it, right Phil? Yes, comical indeed. If you want to redress the ethnic grievances of people all over the world, knock yourself out. You’ll especially do fine in the Middle East, where they’ve been fighting those battles for about 1,000 years now. Oh well…

Serious? Certainly. The Spanish would be a lot better off having a good neighbor than having a fractious district that is Spanish only at gunpoint. You’re saying nothing vis-à-vis the Basquelands–OR Texas, S.C., etc.–that a Soviet apparatchik wouldn’t have said about the Baltic nations thirty years ago. I’ve zero use for the ETA, and hope their terrorists rot in irons, but don’t see why that their depredations should condemn all the Basques to perpetual nationlessness (if that’s a word).

“I’ve zero use for the ETA, and hope their terrorists rot in irons, but don’t see why that their depredations should condemn all the Basques to perpetual nationlessness.”

You can’t have it both ways. If the Basques get their own country, then terrorism works and the ETA get what they want. You should NOT reward terrorism. Then every other ethnic group in the world will think it deserves its own country and will resort to terrorism to get it. The Middle East is filled with people who slaughter each other on an almost daily basis because of this very issue. I don’t think Europe should follow their example. Do you?

Honestly, I don’t have a satisfying answer to that. I don’t wish in the slightest to reward terrorism. However, neither do I want otherwise legitimate political claims to become ipso facto illegitimate the second some jackleg terrorist group decides to champion that claim. That’s giving isolated nuts a decisive veto over law-abiding people affected by the claim. Either stance gives terrorists the whip hand.

The Basques want territory that once was theirs but now has a Spanish majority.No way. Better finally to defeat them militarily as the British could easily done in Ireland in 1921 but lost their nerve. After the Irish Free State was established the IRS went on fighting against its army and de Valera had Tim Collins murdered.
The British could again have won in Ulster by force alone against the Provisionals by ruthlessly confronting their suppliers of arms, Czechoslovakia Libya, Iran and Boston. Slip arms and bombs to the Berbers and the Baluchis the Chechens and the Italian gangsters in Boston as retaliation – end of story. Also arm up the Protestant paramilitaries and give them lists of IRA suspects to take out.

And I can sell you some nice swampland in Florida. The Basque are not a “conquered” people. They never had an independent state.
ETA throws around a bunch of catch phrases, but never actually says “unequivocally renounces violence forever.” They managed to get their political front Bildu approved through some hinky Constitutional Court maneuvering, and are poised to get a bunch of deputies elected to the national parliament on Nov 20. Then they will appeal to get the Batasuna-successor re-instituted and be ready for the Basque regional elections in 2013. Seeing a progression?
The Socialists are playing with fire. This won’t help them in the elections, and the Popular Party is fiercely opposed to concessions to ETA. Not a good scenario all around.

Well, they did have an independent nation a few centuries ago, the Kingdom of Navarre. Though, with that said, I don’t see an independent Basque nation as being reasonable. The Basques aren’t even a majority in the Autonomous country anymore.